


Last Goodbye

by Agnes_Bean



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agnes_Bean/pseuds/Agnes_Bean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought saying goodbye to Mitchell was the hardest thing she'd ever have to do. She was wrong.  (Annie learns to live with Mitchell's death).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Last Author Standing, for the prompt "chance encounter." Feedback of all sorts appreciated. Un-Beta'ed as per challenge rules, so all mistakes are my own.

She thought saying goodbye to Mitchell was the hardest thing she'd ever have to do. Was sure the small stiff nod she gave him — the nod that said _yes, I agree, you need to die_ — would be the single most painful action of her life, unlife, and anything that came after that. Nothing would ever, _could_ ever, hurt so much as their final kiss. It was a moment both excruciating beyond belief and strangely freeing, to know she was experiencing the worst, the very worst the world could possibly throw at her.

She was wrong.

The worst wasn't saying goodbye.

The worst, she found soon after, was all the small reminders that clung to the house like a terrible, crawling mold that she couldn't scrub clean. It was the chance encounters with the discarded, hidden objects lurking in the corners, wrapped tightly in memories she wasn't ready to face.

The first time it happened was two days after he died. A mug with a teabag crusted to the side, hidden away in the corner of the attic. One glance and the memory ( _handing it to him, laughing, his small smile at her ordinary kindness_ ) hit her so hard she flickered out of existence. When she came back she was miles from the house in an empty field. She cried for hours, sobs rocking through her body hard, so hard she thought it would kill her if she wasn't already dead.

The second time was a shirt, hiding in a stack of George's laundry (she was folding it; finding comfort, as always, in the mindless tasks of the everyday. The house had never been so clean). She managed not to disappear, but the ghosting memory of his hand on her cheek left her speechless. For days.

After the fifth encounter (a sock, a stupid sock under the bed) left her unable to leave the bathroom for three hours, she told George and Nina she was leaving for the week. She'd always wanted to see Paris so she would, and when she got back, the house had ( _had_ , absolutely _had_ ) to be clear. They nodded, she left.

Paris was lovely. Everything she'd ever dreamed, except in her dreams there was someone there to dance with her in the cobbled streets and hold her hand as they sipped coffee in cafes. But never mind that. She spent a full two days in the Louvre, losing herself inside paintings. She spent hours sitting in empty chairs at restaurants, watching the life around her. She smiled at the sunset. She really smiled, and for the first time, she realized she could be okay.

When she finally willed herself home, she found George and Nina had gone above and beyond. Not only was the house clean of his discarded objects, it was repainted, his room redecorated. All memory of Mitchell was scrubbed clean. She sighed in relief.

It wasn't until a year later that she realized she'd been wrong again. The worst wasn't saying goodbye, and it wasn't the chance encounters. It was the forgetting. His memory was gone from the house, and that was a relief — until it began to seep away from her, the curve of his smile, the sound of his laugh. _How could she not remember?_

That was the very, very worst.

Every night, she whispered an apology to his fading memory. It felt like a betrayal.

Five years after he died, they moved (a bigger house, a better school for Nina and George's child). As she packed away objects long hidden, she found a single, fingerless glove that was somehow hidden in a bookshelf.

The memories hit hard, just like five years before. But this time, she smiled.  



End file.
